View full sizeAP PhotoA federal program is hoping to control Michigan's wild hog population to protect and improve the Saginaw Bay.

SAGINAW — They’re tasty on the barbecue, a challenge to hunt, a nuisance to farmers and sizzling topic in Lansing.

For months legislators have been reviewing a different kind of pork; not the spending kind.

Feral pigs.

The destructive, elusive, harbingers of disease threaten the ecosystem, and are the offspring of escaped livestock or Eurasian swine imported and bred for game hunts, Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Mary Dettloff said.

“Active enforcement of the order won’t take place until March of 2012,” Dettloff said. “We will be using that time to organize our implementation plan.”

One of the most recent feral swine encounters occurred Tuesday in Saginaw County’s Brant Township.

Saginaw County sheriff’s deputies opened fire and killed an aggressive, charging, tusked hog.

Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Randy Pfau said deputies responded to a home on Ithaca, between Raucholz and South Hemlock, where the homeowner “observed the pig rooting up the property and causing a lot of lawn damage.”

“As they were assessing the pig and its nature, to see if it was a feral pig... they got closer to the pig and the pig really charged them,” Pfau said. “And one of the two deputies that was there shot and killed the pig.

“They had to retreat back to the patrol car as the pig was chasing them.”

Dr. Patrick Rusz is the director of Wildlife Programs for the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy and a wild hog expert who supports the swine ban.

After interviewing deputies and the landowner, he determined based on their descriptions — the carcass had already been disposed of — that it the pig was a Eurasian-domestic livestock hybrid, referred to as a “meat hog” at game ranges.

“It’s just a suspicion... but I would guess that it’s from a fairly recent escape of released because it showed absolutely no fear of people,” Rusz said.

He said full-blood Eurasian hogs are usually larger, darker in color, hairier and much more skittish.

Doug Miller, a construction worker, owns Thunder Hills Ranch in Jackson County, which raises swine for controlled hunts, and is a Michigan Animal Farmers Association board member. He said the DNR is overstating the problem.

“The numbers that they have out there are greatly exaggerated,” Miller said. “There are over 10 million days of hunting by those 600,000 deer hunters, and they didn’t kill any pigs.”

Miller theorizes that the resulting ban is the culmination of a political war waged by the pork industry against its only competitor, places like Thunder Hills Ranch, and that the DNR has caved to its lobbyists.

“There is no way they will stop me from shooting pigs in my enclosure unless they outlaw every pig in this state,” he said. “I shoot 300 to 400 pigs a year at , let’s say $500 a piece.

“I’ve got in the neighborhood of $2 million invested into that ranch. I was setting it up for my retirement. I started in 1996 to get to where I am now.”

Rusz, who has testified about the state’s feral pig problem before the Legislature, said there are an estimated 65 game ranches that sell pig hunts in the state.

There are six proposed laws in the state House of Representatives before the 16-member Agriculture Committee.

If passed, the laws would regulate ownership, importing and breeding, and would suppress the DNR ban.

State Rep. Stacy Erwin Oakes, D-Saginaw, a member of the Agriculture Committee, which reviewed the bills, said the bills received no Democrat support in committee.

The Republicans “could not get enough votes to get it out of committee, so it appear that they have decided to go against strong opposition,” Oakes said. “We don’t need legislation of feral swine, “we need eradication,” she said.

View full sizeCourtesy of Sheriff's DepartmentPig that Saginaw County sheriff's deputies shot and killed after it rushed them

The DNR plans to “phase in the gradual depopulation of the facilities that currently offer swine hunting,” Dettloff said.

“The plan would be designed so that it would have minimal economic impact on those facilities by allowing them to re-engineer their business plan to remove swine hunting,” she said. “The plan is not yet final, but we want to be able to give the facilities a large window to eliminate their swine behind the fences.”

The DNR began officially tracking the growing number of feral pigs in 2006.

Since that time, the agency recorded 283 sightings — including reports of swine damage, scat and tracks — and 205 killings in Michigan counties, according to DNR reports.

A disclaimer on the DNR report says the accuracy of the sightings and killings “may not have been confirmed.”

Rusz, who compared feral pigs to 300-pound cockroaches, said some experts estimate a population of 2,000 and 5,000 wild pigs in the state.

In 2010, legislation passed to allow hunters to kill feral hogs on public lands during the course of hunting other game.

More content about feral pigs:

See a county-by-county breakdown of feral sightings and killings, as reported by the DNR

Listen to an interview with Michigan native Ted Nugent, also an avid hunter, owner of a Sunrize Acres, a property in Jackson that offers hunters an chance at "monster trophy Russian and Austrian HogBeasts." Nugent, who feels that hog problem is blown out of proportion, reportedly said previously: "People have lost their minds in Michigan. If there are 7,000 pigs
running around Michigan, I'm a gay banjo player in a hee-haw band," according to a Michigan Information & Research Service report.